What Diet Can and Cannot Do

Editor(s):
C. Lifschitz Annales Nestlé
Vol.74/1
,
2016

Summary

In this issue, we address four crucial topics related to the therapeutic role of the diet.
First, Drs. Chumpitazi and Shulman, from the Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College
of Medicine, and the Section of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, Texas Children’s
Hospital and Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Houston, Tex., USA discuss
the role of carbohydrate in causing abdominal pain.
Next, Drs. Feuille and Nowak-Węgrzyn, from the Division of Allergy and Immunology,
Department of Pediatrics, Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, Icahn School of Medicineat Mount Sinai,
Kravis Children’s Hospital, New York, N.Y., USA, address the topic of oral immunotherapy,
which has demonstrated efficacy in desensitizing subjects to offending food proteins.
However, this is still an investigational therapy for food allergy.

One of the most fascinating aspects of diet therapy is addressed next by Dr. Frank M. Ruemmele
from the Sorbonne University, the Descartes University and the Hôpital Necker Enfants Malades,
Pediatric Gastroenterology Service, Paris, France.
The topic is induction of remission of Crohn’s disease by diet. The idea of using nutrition is
in contrast to former practice, when patients with Crohn’s disease were given bowel rest and
treated with intravenous nutrition and corticosteroids, which came along with a list of quite dramatic
and sometimes irreversible side effects.

Finally, a potpourri of topics is discussed under one heading addressing the questions that doctors
are always being asked by parents and sometimes by colleagues.
Dr. Cruchet and colleagues, from the Nutrition and Food Technology Institute (INTA), Chile University
and the Luis Calvo Mackenna Hospital, Santiago, Chile, address the subject of truths, myths and needs of
special diets with respect to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, nonceliac, gluten sensitivity, vegetarianism and autism.